Quite the Little Criminal
by Fencing Supplies
Summary: Because I had to add my own little "Jack Sparrow's Daughter Tale". My take on who she would be and how she would grow. ONE-SHOT.


Old Man Pat kneaded the dough, his face red and knuckles swollen in varying shades of purple from the hours of baking he had done so far that morning. She watched his sweat drip down and run into the flour. Absentmindedly, she tried to move her arm again, but I didn't move, the rope made sure of that.

She was a feral looking girl, all wild and mass and knots. She had taken to drawing things in the dirt of the floor and tapping her boots together in a crude rhythm. A police officer came into the shop, and she fell silent and still.

"Good day baker," said the shiny and polished officer, tipping his hat.

"Ah! A very good morning Sir Garside!" Bumbles the baker, wiping flour and dough over his apron. "She's this way." He ushered and led Sir Garside behind the counter and amongst the bakery equipment to where she was, arm tied firmly to the leg of a table and scowling from where she was on the floor. Sir Garside bent down to look her in the eye.

"Now Ruth, you've gone and gotten caught this time didn't you?" Sir Garside's eyes were swimming with glee as the small girl scrunched up her nose and turned her face away.

"Wouldn't have if you would take these bells off me." She grumbled under her breathe, and sure enough, when she turned back to look the officer in the eye, the tinkling of bells sounded throughout the air.

They were all knotted and tied into her hair by Sir Garside's daughter, tiny and hidden underneath untameable locks. "I am gonna chop them out soon!" she threatened the man.

Sir Garside just chucked, Ruth knew very well what the punishment would be. No honey for a month - and for a seven year old who dearly, dearly loved her sweets- that was a threat deadly enough to make her keep the bells in.

"Right," said Sir Garside as he started to untie the rope, "what did she try and steal this time baker?"

The sweaty baker jumped, startled by the sudden change in the officers voice.

"Ah-ah bag of wafers, Sir Garside"

Of course, Ruth could never resist when she smelt the stuff being made. He pulls the girl up by the arm and straightened her clothes up for her.

"You are lucky this is a tiny town,"

"Yes, I know,"

"You are lucky I am the only officer here,"

"Yes, I know,"

"You are lucky the village people are so kind,"

"Yes, I know,"

"The punishment for trying to steal is death,"

"Yes, I know,"

"And I have every right to hang you,"

"Yes, I know,"

"And you really need to stop this terrible habit of stealing,"

"Yes, I know,"

Sir Garside nodded and let Ruth go. He said the same thing every time the girl was caught, but he held onto the hope that one day she will actually _hear _him.

But for now, he needs to be patient with the young girl and be content with the fact that at least she only stole from the shops of people she knew. It would be terrible if she was to loot the wrong person, for then they would demand justice be carried through and then he would have to charge her officially.

"Poor girl, no father and a mother dancing with death." The baker said from where he was, also, watching Ruth run out onto the street, her olive skin flashing gold as the sunlight reunited with her.

"No parent to teach her good behaviour," Sir Garside agreed as the baker started kneading the dough again.

"She has you to look up to, so that cannot be the reason for her…" the baker paused for the right word, "…trouble making, boy like behaviour."

"I do not think she holds an ounce of respect for me, baker," replied Sir Garside. Pulling his officer hat over his eyes, he walked out of the bakery and onto the hot street. If Ruth, indeed, had been a boy, she would have been praised for her feats of cunning and sent off to solider school. Sir Garside wished that Ruth would just sit down, stop tearing up her nice dresses, and learn to cook or sew like his daughters.

But of course, Sir Garside realised, that was rather impossible, as he caught a glance of the said girl climbing up onto the blacksmith's roof.

0000

She kicked her toes into the cracks in the brick walls as she scrambled up onto the roof. Heaving herself up, she felt a few tiles on the roof slip as she moved along to the huge chimney. She crawled along on her hands and knees, her dress so tattered and torn that they allowed her to move as well as any boys clothes would.

To the side of the chimney, when she wriggled a tile and pulled it up, was a small, folded piece of paper.

"Ah ha!" She shouted in glee, happy that the hiding place had not been found out. It had taken some long hours to steal this little thing, but it was worth it. She pulled a small pouch that she wore around her neck from up under her dress and snuggled the paper away safely, alongside the ball of marzipan she had managed to steal from the baker before he noticed and a shiny ribbon.

Crawling back over to the wall and climbing down, as soon as her feet hit the dirt she started running for the cover of the heather fields that surrounded the little plot of businesses. Her thin boots crunched against the rocky ground and her hair flew out behind her in wild waves, the bells tinkering up a festival in her wake. Weaving in and out of the scratchy bushes and stunted trees, she jumped down into a gully and followed it along, her head swivelling as she tried to remember where she hid her pony.

The grass started to thicken and soon was taller than her, amongst the sea of brown and red Ruth spotted her flea bitten grey pony. She racing across to the half blind, half deaf, half arthritis crippled animal, gasping for breath. She untied where she had knotted it to a root that bulged from the ground and jumped on the old things bare back, kicking it into a run.

She was too excited to wait any longer, she had the map pressed against her chest and she had the key under her bed at home. All that was left was to find the treasure!

0000

Her pony clopped slowly down the dirt road to the manor house, its top speed. As they neared the side of the house, Ruth jumped of its back and raced to the servant door, leaving the pony to gratefully graze on the green grass in the gardens.

Yanking her shoes off at the door, she spun and started running in the direction of her room. Ruth races up tight stairways, through storerooms and past hurried maids until she reached the manor house's guest quarters from the concealed servant door. Ruth padded softly over the rug covered floor, so as not to wake her mother who shared the room with her. Bending down and jamming herself under her bed, she snatched the golden key from where it was in a jewellery box, nestled amongst the folded blankets, pillows and pots.

Leaping up, Ruth realised with a start that her mother had woken up and was looking straight at her.

"Got the key and the map now Mother!" Ruth explained excitedly, and watched as her Mother's blank face cracked into a smile.

"You are a long way from done though," the bed ridden lady whispered in her loudest voice. Ruth deflated in horror

"Awwh! What do ya mean?" She jumped over her own bed and raced to her mother, making the women's bed creak when she leaned her scungy, little elbows on the edge of the bed.

"Ruth dear, I have been told by Lord Finnegan that you are still stealing even after I gave you this treasure to find."

Ruth scowled.

"You promised me that you would stop."

Ruth pursed her lips.

"Why do you continue, dear," asked her mother as she stroked her daughter's tangled hair.

"I am paying my soldiers," Ruth explained, "like this morning, I stole some icing from the baker-"

"Ruth!"

"so that I can repay the youngest blacksmith apprentice for forging the key for me-" Ruth paused, "why did it have to be a _drawing _of a key anyway, Mother!"

The sick lady chuckled quietly,

"Oh, just an idea that I had heard of many years ago. You see, there was this man who was telling me all about this drawing that he had been searching for." The lady leaned closer to the child, and whisper, "a drawing of a key."

Ruth giggled and her Mother's freckled face quickly morphed to mirror the young girl's joy. "Ruth, I have made you something." The women reached over and pulled up a scarf which the lady had obviously knitted herself. "Winter is coming and the winds shall soon be starting up, you might need this soon." Ruth took the scarf but grumbled at her mother.

"Clothes never last long with me Mother, you are going to die soon, and so can you make be something that will last?" The girl said it so frankly that the Mother's face drained to white.

"You have been listening?"

"No, I am just smart."

0000

"She was a fine woman," said Lord Finnegan said to Ruth as the coffin was slowly lowered into the grave. He reached into one of the pockets of his extravagant rich man's gown and handed a necklace to the girl. Ruth numbly took it, not sure what it was.

"She had been carving it for you before she died," the man watched as the little girl's tear streaked face stretched wide in realisation.

It was a wooden pendent, small and carved with neat, fine knife strokes. On one side was a crude ship, sailing on the ocean, on the other was the words Captain, an outline of a bird, and then underneath is…father?

She felt waves of shock and heat roll through her body, was this treasure, was it a simple remembrance gift or was it a clue? She slipped it over her head; it was long and reached her belly button.

She watched her mother's coffin be slowly covered in grey, poor soil; her last gift grasped in her hand like it was life itself.

"Lord Finnegan, will I be able to stay?" She asked the master of the house, who had once opened his doors to a distant cousin, ragged and filthy with a newborn cradled in her arms. Lord Finnegan looked down at the small girl, who was for the first time in a nice, new dress and not stubbornly chasing the estates hounds or ducks, determined to "break it in" and tear the beautiful fabric apart.

"Only if," said the wealthy man, "you start to behave like a lady."

And so, walking beside the richest man in the entire island chain, dress swaying sophisticatedly in the wind, the young, little, chubby cheeked girl promised to no more be caught on any unbecoming adventures.

And so, with her pendent, one which was filled with a dying Mother's drawings of adventure and with bells tinkering from in her hair, the young, little, devilish girl promised to no more be "caught" on any more "unbecoming" adventures.

0000

The old pony wheezed and spluttered as it walked up the slope, reaching the top just as the sun turned the sky orange and red. The girl upon its back, her hair brushed back into a bun, pulled her summer hat down so as to shadow her eyes.

Her dress was light and thin, so as to keep her cool in the Caribbean summer. The newly thirteen year old flicked her old and cantankerous mount which jolted forward and then came to a grinding halt in response. Ruth clicked her tongue in thought and then jumped off the old thing's back. She was as tall as it now and was old enough to understand that it really was just too old to continue any further.

"Gah! You lazy old pony!-" and she continued to curse her pony in language that no girl should know as she pulled the sweat soaked saddled and bribe off the steed, hiding it under a bush nearby and tying the pony down near some grass. There was no water, it was very much a dry and rocky island this one, but moist grass was the next best thing.

Making sure that her very tired mode of transport had it good, she took off in a run, intent to make it to the other side of the island, even now that she was traveling on foot.

Now and then, her fairy like dress will fly up and cheekily reveal her knickers. Ruth cared nothing for it though, she was running faster than her old pony could hope to move, one hand holding her hat down and the other pressed to her chest, keeping the small bag underneath the dresses fabric from jolting about.

Soon, after a while that would have made many working adults arrive heaving for breathe; the hardly puffed girl reached the shoreline. She had made it to the other side of the island, she had set out before the sun rose that morning, had galloped her horse across heater fields and through the canyons of the huge rock formations that lined the inland of the island. Finally she was here!

Her shoes dug into the sand, and a thrill went up her spine. There was no sand on the beach on the other side of the island, only planks of wood that sprout out onto the water and tied down boats that blocked the horizon from view.

Here there was nobody, here she could see, by the spectacular sunset, all the way to the edge of the world. The wind went so unchallenged by buildings and mountains that it screamed against her ears and screeded its teeth into her dress.

She loves this, _she_ _loves this._

Ruth runs along in the sand, loving the feel as it grates and slides against her newly de-shoed feet. The birds fly up in fright, there are so many here, because here they are free from naught boys who crack their eggs open. She jumps over a tidal steam that stretches into the sand dunes and sees a seal crawl back into the waves, that seal is free from drunken men who might feel the need to shot it.

She is also free here, free to run unbecomingly and make buildings in the wet sand unbecomingly and fish for crabs in the rock pools unbecomingly.

Then, suddenly, it is dark. So very dark…she has never been out this late before. She was too young to think this through. Her heart is racing so much that it all just feels like one single beat humming through her.

Slowly the stars wink alive and the moon starts to glow, holy and full. With her pockets and hat filled of shells and feathers, she darts back up the winding track, carved by wild pigs and no one else, to where she had left her pony upon the top of the hill.

She is moving much faster than before, because now, instead of running to, she is running from. From what? From something that she doesn't know, from ideas and horror stories. It makes sense for a little girl to be afraid of the dark. But the thing is, this one shouldn't be scared, for five years now, ever since her mother's funeral, Ruth has been sneaking out at night and taking off on night time adventures. She suffers the horrors in the day, of lady lessons and kitchen hand work.

Deep down in this girl, her core is just pure, molten, bubbling trouble, there is no room for fear or doubt. So where is this shiver inducing fear coming from? She realises with dread, from something she has but ignores most of the time- common sense.

She sees her pony in the distance, its body now black with shadows and outlined in silverly moonlight. It is her saviour, this sight of a familiar face; she is nearly home, even though there is four times more distance to travel still.

But something is wrong. She slows as her old pony tossed its head and pulls against the rope, neighing loudly in protest. Suddenly, the old pony rears up on its hind legs and slashes at the air. Ruth knows instantly that something is _wrong_, she has never seen her pony do such things in her life, it simply takes too much effort for the old fool to do so.

Slowly, so that her shells didn't tinkle together and give her away, she steps off the track and into the scratchy bushes, weaving herself into them and hiding as well as a white dressed girl can on a full moon night.

She crouches down and stays silent, slowing her breathing down and listening so closely that she can near the stars squeaking as they shine. Then she hears it, the distance thunder of hooves.

Most would become paralysed and stay, silent and hidden, hoping to mother hopes that the night rider would continue past. It was common sense, in fact, to do a thing such as that.

But Ruth never really listened to common sense…but tonight she had been…but now was the moment that with a cruel hand, she slaughtered every last sense and common that she had. Jumping up, not caring for her full pockets, hat or pouch, she raced out and up the track to her worried pony.

If it was a good person or someone her old pony knew, then he would not be acting like this at all. With dust kicking up in her wake, her feet bitting into the ground as she snapped like lighting up to her oldest friend. As she reached his side, she was confused to see not a moving soul over the other side of the hill.

But why could she still hear the thundering?

Ruth turned slowly, swallowing as she saw; they were coming from the direction she had just come from. Black shapes, moving faster than her young eyes could track, their coats billowing out over their huge horse's flanks.

She did not have time to strap the saddle back on or slip the bridle back over the old pony's head. She yanked and fumbled as she tried to untie the horse's rope, cursing her for the terror induced clumsiness. With a hard pull it slipped undone, and she flung herself up onto the pony's back, only to slip down again when her long dress prevented her from fitting her leg across.

Her old pony was shaking and tossing like a storm, standing on her shoes and bruising her toes blue and black. With tears streaming down her cheeks and flying from her face and hair, long ago fallen from its bun and so now wildly shrouding her face and stopping her from seeing anything, she grasped a fist full of her dress and tore it apart.

Lunging onto the old ponies back she dug her heels into its ribs and knitted her hands into its mane. The old gelding needed no prompting; it was off as soon as he felt her but hit his backbone.

That was when the gunshots started, burying craters into the ground where they hit. Ruth flattened herself against the pony as he pounded, her body seizing up in pure terror overload and brain shutting her down so as to protect her sanity.

This old, little, ugly in a way pony was many things before he became knackered and was palmed off to a snotty nosed child with rebellious tendencies. But a getaway horse he had never been. So the big beasts, striding one to his every three, ate up the ground no matter how furiously he rode. The gunshots had stopped now, because it seemed that the people chasing them had also realised the doomed fate of their prey. Why waste bullets?

For the sake of his life, and the girl, she needed to wake up and start thinking cunning like the humans had the tendency to do.

But she was not, frozen tight and still over his bare back, not an inch of life could be found in her blank and almost doll like face.

The old pony could not last, he was starting to stumble and lurch in absolute exhaustion as he raced into the small canyon that the girl had rode him through before. He could feel the other horses hot breath on his rump, they were that close.

Ruth numbly noted how the jagged rocks of the canyon bounced the moonlight around like a house full of mirrors. Her skin was bitten and smacked red by the cool night and the fast speed her old pony had ridden at. In the top half of a light dress and a pair of children's knickers, she shivered into her pony's hot and steaming hide.

She heard the sliding of rope as the riders drew it from their saddles, preparing to throw and bind her and her old pony.

And it is with that in which the glass pane of protection shatters, allowing the pristine and powder dusted lady inside to feel the wind as it bursts into her house, and feel the _true_ wind for the first time and _realise_.

Ruth spun her head around and counted. Three strong horses and three skeleton thin men. The criminals, she realised, Sir Garside had been telling her weeks ago about three criminals that escaped from jail and made away on stolen horses.

Her young mind tried to wonder what they wanted her for. The horse for meat and the girl for ransom? Lord Finnegan had explained to her about ransoms, she knew what they were.

But these people could not have recognised her, and they had been shouting to kill before!

For meat then. For this island is the driest and harshest that the tropical Caribbean has to offer, the birds are too quick, the seals too nimble and the wild pigs too keen scented for these men to hunt.

She does not know these canyons like the back of her hand, does not know secret passage ways and short cuts. Ruth is truly stuck, for the first time, this queen of the night and master thief, who has not been caught in years, leading to the happy removal for her "alarm bells", is stuck with no plan.

She grabs fistfuls of the shells and feathers in her pockets and starts to chuck them at the men behind her. Most fly past harmlessly but one man gets a gob of sand in his eyes.

All that serves to do is make him angrier though.

Her necklace has slipped from under her dress and flies out behind her, waving in amongst her brown hair.

She buries her face her heaving pony's hair and prays.

And then becomes appalled with herself.

And then becomes angry.

She turns back and realises, they are so close, so close that their horse's snouts are level with her pony's thigh. She thinks about waiting until they draw right alongside with her, but sees that one has started to sling his lasso rope above his head. She does not have such luxury of time.

She slowly turns around as her old pony rocks underneath her, she judges the distance, drags her feet up and dig them into her old friend's side as she lunges.

She is a tattered, muscly, strong and a _wild _thing. Always torn with scabs that are thankfully hidden by the long dressers of the manor house.

She collides with the horses neck and scapes past, her hands glide over the man's billowing cape and only just manage to clamp like iron tongs around the last few inches, pulling the man to lie flat on his back.

Ruth pulls herself onto the horse's rump, not letting go of the cape until she has her balance. This horse runs much the same has her pony and so she finds it easier than expected to steady herself and anticipate the rhythmic plunges of the animal's run.

With her hands along the horses spine, Ruth does something drastic when she realises the man has righted himself and is now fumbling with his gun.

She remembers the stories of sea monsters and ocean goddesses, which the chef insists are true to the hundredth degree, she remembers the sailors who throw themselves off the masts but manage to land safely like cats on the deck, she remembers the one sword fight that happened in town, and how many feats that seemed impossible but at the time improbably happened.

These criminal men were sailors stopping by before they got arrested and made a desperate run, they travel the sea not the land, no matter how scrawny and small she is, she has the advantage of knowing how to move upon the horse's back.

So, as the horse takes its seventh stride and prepare for its habitual eight which is more off kilter than the rest, she swings her feet around and slams her legs into the man's ribcage, sending him toppling over.

He hangs off the side of the saddle, the horse bulks and jumps as its rider hangs, head dragging along the ground. The man's feet are twisted and trapped in the stirrups of the saddle and Ruth leans over and starts bending and pulling the man's boot slowly out.

Ruth hears the man's gun click, and she looks down at him to see that it is pointed straight for her.

Her hand darts out and grabs it, yanking up and pulling it from the man's grimy hands. But he manages to pull the trigger, and while it whizzes past her, it drills itself into the thick neck of the horse. The animal screams and starts to gallop again, some part of it believing that it can run from the pain. The man finally falls free and Ruth heaves herself up, swinging her legs on either side of the horses huffing belly.

She swirls her head wildly around, trying to look through her whirling black hair for the other two that had been pulling their horses up and circling back before the horse had been shot and charged off.

She spun to look behind her, and was confronted with the sight of two guns being powdered and prepared from where they were chasing upon their rocking horses. Ruth reached her arm around and blindly attempted to shoot one, but ended up nearly tearing her hand in half and missed dismally. She forgot about shooting entirely as her gun powder covered hand throbs and opted to use it as more of a club if they ever got within range of her flailing arms.

With one hand gripping the reins of the most powerful and wild eyed stallion she had ever seen, the other holding a gun out to her side, the stirrups too long so that she was practically riding bare back but with bum padding and dark, silver glowing hair streaming like Sunday Parade ribbons, something clicked.

That click you get when you final realise that, this is what I want to do for the rest of my life, this is what I was born to do, I have never been happier than in this moment, my world for the first time feels complete.

The horse's blood has started to fly out and she is splattered in it, running like angry slashes over her skin thanks to the horses speed. But the beast is dying and slowing down, and the men with intent to kill are gaining.

She is some sick freak; Ruth realises, to be enjoying this game of death.

She can feel that the time for them to shoot is soon, and so she jumps. Rolling and crunching into the ground. The horses are traveling at such a high speed that they run past her. The two last riders swirl their mounts around cruelly and try to re-establish their aim on her.

But they are only meters from her now, she has a loaded gun in her hands and she is too unnaturally suited to this. She clenches her teeth through the pain as the gun blasts her fingers backwards, but she makes sure they were dead before she dared drop the weapon.

It was silent, only the whines of the fleeing horses as they hurtled away from the explosions of the gun fire.

She sat still and crumpled like a dead baby, crippled and blackened, streaked with blood, covered in dirt and gravel burn, in only shredded clothes and knickers.

Eventually, so much longer so that the night birds started to whistle again and the insects screech, she managed to focus on something other than her hands.

Her pony. She looked up the trail from where they had come, past the man who she had kicked off, now deathly still and in a puddle of his own blood, past that man's small body, to where there was a bigger one.

She traced the silvery outline with her eyes, he was just a shape in the distance, he was so far away, crumpled and _still._ She simply did not have the life force to reach him.

Warm puffs of breath fanned her hair, and Ruth looked up to see that one of the criminal's horses had not run. This one was tamer- or loyaler possibly- than the other two.

_But not as loyal as her old pony._

The horse that had stayed was a common brown with dumb eyes, Ruth looked up and felt everything crumble in helplessness when she realised how tall the animals was. She made it up onto its back though, through sheer will power she did not know she possessed.

Perhaps looking at the dead bodies of the men had speared her on a bit.

She adjusted the stirrups with charred fingers, slotted the gun into the holster beside the saddle, and turned the horse.

Not for the town, but for her old pony. Slowly the two retraced the distance that the high adrenaline sequence had been carried out.

It seemed like forever. Had her life truly been in death's hands such a short while ago?

He was dead, shoot through the back of the head.

She rode, numb and slow, back to her home. Stripped the horse of all her tack in thanks and turned the brown into a green pasture. Ruth snuck inside through an open window and run herself a bath.

A hot bath, so steamy that you can barely feel your tears.

As she balled and screamed Bloody Mary into her fists. Her sadness out weighing everything of relevance. Even the stone cold mirror wept for her, the moisture beads gather and dripped down its shattered face.

She cocooned her sheets around her, sick and also disgusted.

That she wanted, deep down, to do that again.

0000


End file.
